Emma Goldman

1869–1940 · Anarchist orator, writer and editor of Mother Earth

Born in Kovno in 1869 and dead in Toronto in 1940, Emma Goldman was the most notorious anarchist in America — a factory worker turned lecturer who toured relentlessly on anarchism, free speech, atheism, birth control and free love, and who was deported to Russia in 1919. She founded and edited the journal Mother Earth and wrote Anarchism and Other Essays (1910) and The Social Significance of the Modern Drama (1914). Her two-volume autobiography Living My Life, written in Saint-Tropez after her disillusionment with the Bolsheviks, is where this sentence is documented.

Traced to source

7 quotes we’ve traced to Emma Goldman

“I do not believe in God, because I believe in man”

Verified

“The most violent element in society is ignorance”

Verified

“Ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you bread, then take bread”

Attributed

“I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck”

Disputed

“If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution”

Disputed

“If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal”

Disputed

“No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law”

Disputed

Not actually Emma Goldman

Often misattributed to Emma Goldman

Famous lines widely pinned on Emma Goldman that we’ve traced to someone else.

“A society gets all the criminals it deserves”

actually Alexandre Lacassagne

“I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck”

actually Unknown

“If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal”

actually Anonymous

“Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open”

actually Margaret C. Anderson

Did they really say it?

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